Simple Advice on How to Recognize a Work at Home Scam

It's hard to believe that many Work at Home scams continue to lure people, masquerading as "job opportunities." "Only three positions left," many of them will say. So you click on the link and get redirected to a replicated website that looks like a news article from your area. If you live in Wichita, Kansas, as I do, a "work at home" mom making thousands of dollars, is "taking advantage" of this Work at Home scam from my hometown of Wichita. Using an RSS feed, I could be from Hays, KS., or Ponca City, OK., and the same picture of that "work at home" mom would appear, only this time, the phony news article would state that she's from Hays or Ponca City.

It ought to be unethical, if not outright fraudulent, to litter legitimate job search websites with these phony "job opportunities," which do nothing but try to take $97, $48.50, or whatever dollar amount these bogus job opportunities websites can extract from you, in exchange for turning you into one of these con artists yourself. That's right. The minute you bite on any of these "opportunities," the sooner you'll discover that you'll be posting links to try to lure people in to the same deal you just "purchased." How do I know this? I browsed a few of these websites myself, and even though I was careful not to give out my name or e-mail address, I still found my junk mail inbox flooded with the exact same offer from about ten different e-mail addresses. I challenge anyone out there promising to show others how to make money online to actually do it, without charging money up front, and then charging even more, time and again, to keep purchasing "the missing pieces" of their money making venture, when the whole exercise is nothing more than making you dole out more money to these hucksters in search of something that doesn't make any money, because that's how the hucksters make their money.

In the case of the recent "job opportunities" going around on the internet, promising to earn a respondent "$379 a day, or $5,000 a month (I wonder where they come up with those figures)," the ones promoting this wonderful opportunity show a check from June 25, 2010 (one check!) as proof that this venture pays off, as well as "screen shots" of earnings that nobody can decipher. Yet I seem to keep receiving up to ten offers from this one money making scheme alone every day with names changing, but pictures of the same people and always from my hometown of Wichita, Kansas, showing up.

Even more amusing is how you get directed to a web page to place an order for this junk, and they'll usually charge something like $97.00. If you decide to pass, you get a pop-up that then discounts this amazing offer to around $48.50. If you still don't bite, they may lower the price to $27.00. If it was so great at $97.00, why drop the price to $27.00 on the third offer? I would worry about giving my credit card number out to somebody like this, because what would prevent someone from using the number again to just enter in an amount of their choosing, say $99.00? Two or three times at $99.00, and you have almost $200 or $300. Most credit card companies decline to prosecute someone for fraud if the amount stolen from your credit card is under, say $100. So in addition to there being no "job" or "business opportunity," this money making venture may also be a credit card scam. If the opportunity changes the price from $97.00 to $48.50 to $27.00 simply because you said no "twice," it would appear that whoever is marketing this wonderful "opportunity," simply wants to get whatever money they can from you and move on to their next victim. Even for the sake of argument, if you got involved with this phony scheme, you'll just shell out money to advertise this scam to others and compete with the others who fell for it, who may be simply trying to get their investment back, because some people are better at scamming others with this venture than you are.

One last thing to think about, before falling for this type of a "job" or "opportunity." When you listen to the "newscaster" video, and it always seems to be the same lady reporting from one of those Current Edition types of news programs, they never mention "making money from home" from the opportunity being advertised. They just talk about making money from home in a general sense and interview a few people who have done it, but they never reveal the method being used to make the money or show any proof. In summary, it can't be much of a lucrative money-making venture, if you have to pay money up front, and then discover that you have a lot of competition from people trying to get others to spend their hard-earned cash on the same venture. It's just a variation on the old envelope stuffing scam that promised people they'd make thousands of dollars a week, only to reveal that you have to place ads convincing others to do the same thing you're doing and that unless you sell a particular product to someone, you won't make any money.